Free Republic

Back in June, FBI agent Chase Bishop was at a bar in Denver when he decided to do a backflip with his duty weapon on his hip. When he made the made the flip, his gun fell out of the waistband of his pants. As Bishop picked up the firearm to place it back in his pants, he accidentally hit bar-goer Tom Reddington. The round hit one of Reddington's main arteries. According to his attorney, he could have died had witnesses not created a tourniquet with a belt while they waited for EMS to arrive. And it was all caught...

A Jersey City police duty belt -- equipped with a firearm -- was found on a Jersey City street Sunday night, authorities confirmed. The duty belt was found on Winfield Avenue near Kennedy Boulevard at approximately 8:30 p.m. and was turned over to police, Jersey City police spokeswoman Kimberly Wallace-Scalcione said. Police refused to release any other information on the incident, citing an internal affairs investigation into the incident. A duty belt is worn by officers and regularly includes handcuffs, a gun holster, a flashlight; and it can also hold chemical irritant or a taser.

SCHERTZ, Texas (AP) - The death of a 6-year-old boy who was shot and killed by a stray bullet when deputies near San Antonio opened fire on a woman being sought for crimes is a "tragic accident," a Texas sheriff said Friday. The woman, 30-year-old Amanda Jones, was also fatally shot in the incident Thursday afternoon. Bexar County deputies had pursued her for a car theft and other offenses about two hours before confronting her on the porch of a trailer that she had forced her way into, Sheriff Javier Salazar said. The boy, Kameron Prescott, was inside the trailer,...

DENTON COUNTY -- A Dallas Police Department officer has been arrested and accused of stealing hundreds of dollars in groceries from a Walmart store in Denton County. Northeast police officers were called to the Walmart in Cross Roads, Texas at about 1:30 a.m. Wednesday for reports of a theft. Employees told police that the suspect, identified as 30-year-old Christopher Hankins, left the store with close to $830 in groceries without paying, all while wearing a Dallas Police Department jacket. Hankins told officers that he panicked thinking his car had been stolen, so he went outside with his grocery cart. Officers...

More one third of the firearms seized in February from the home of Pasadena Police Lt. Vasken Gourdikian cannot be sold to civilians by gun shops in California, according to a review of the list of weapons by this newspaper. These handguns can only be purchased by law enforcement officers, or through a private party, because the models do not appear on California’s “roster” of guns approved for sale to the general public. Agents with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco Firearms and Explosives raided Gourdikian’s Sierra Madre home in February, taking away a total of 61 guns and gun parts,...

Tulsa County Sheriff’s Office spokesman Justin Green said that although an investigative report was taken following Saturday’s accidental shooting at the Wanenmacher’s Tulsa Arms Show, no criminal charges would be pursued against the shooter. Green said the man who was shot, former TCSO Sgt. Rick Treadwell, had told investigators he did not want charges to be filed. Treadwell identified the shooter as Brian Pounds, a Tulsa County Assessor’s Office employee. Pounds, a former candidate for Tulsa County commissioner, served as a reserve deputy under former Sheriff Stanley Glanz.

An unarmed grandfather in the early stages of dementia was shot dead by police while he walked around the block near his home. Francisco Serna, 73, was hit nine times by gunfire from police in Bakersfield, California, answering a call about a man with a gun - but no weapon was recovered from the scene. He was stood in his neighbor's driveway at around 12.30am Monday morning when he was gunned down. His family said he took the late-night walks to tire himself out.

Southern California police agencies regularly lose track of all manner of firearms, from high-powered rifles and grenade launchers to standard service handguns – weapons that often wind up on the street. An Orange County Register investigation of 134 state and local police agencies from Kern County to the Mexican border found that over the past five years at least 329 firearms were lost by or stolen from law enforcement agencies. Dozens of these weapons wound up in the hands of criminals – and some were involved in crimes. In Northern California, a missing police gun was used in a suspected...

A San Francisco sheriff’s deputy accidentally discharged a non-duty weapon, a "baby Glock," inside the Hall of Justice on Wednesday morning, apparently while trying to demonstrate the proper use of the weapon to a colleague. The round narrowly missed the fellow deputy, but no one was injured. San Francisco Sheriff’s Department spokeswoman Eileen Hirst said the discharge occurred before court started and was under investigation. She was not able to provide details, pending the outcome of the probe. “An accidental discharge of a firearm is a very serious matter,” she said. “We are all very grateful that no one was...

Pennsylvania Turnpike officials say the suspect shot and killed by police after a robbery attempt that turned violent was a retired state trooper. The suspect has been identified as Trooper Clarence Briggs of Newville, Pennsylvania. It happened just before 7 a.m. Sunday at the Fort Littleton Interchange in Fulton County in South Central Pennsylvania. According to police, Briggs tied up two people, one of whom has been identified as 55-year-old Danny Crouse, inside a building next to the toll booths.

More than two dozen firearms that were supposed to be in the custody of the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) somehow made their way back to the streets and were used in other crimes, documents obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation appear to show. An internal memo from the D.C. Department of Forensic Sciences (DFS) reveals 24 guns police confiscated between 2005 and 2012 vanished from the MPD evidence locker and were later confiscated yet again in other crimes. One of the weapons reappeared in a murder, while several others were used to commit violent crimes

DES MOINES, Iowa,- A Des Moines, Iowa, police officer accidentally fired his gun while practicing his quick draw skills in an airport office, a police report says. Officer Brady Pratt, 23, was in a Des Moines International Airport office Wednesday afternoon and drew his weapon to practice "his quick draw skills" and "unknowingly had his finger on the trigger and discharged a round into the ceiling tile," the report states. The bullet struck the ceiling, traveled through a wall and into a ceiling tile in an unoccupied adjacent hallway. No one was injured, but another police officer was present to...

Burlington, Iowa - Des Moines County Sheriff Mike Johnstone accidentally shot himself in the hand. On Wednesday, December 16th, Sheriff Johnstone suffered a gunshot wound to his left hand while cleaning his personally-owned handgun at his home. Sheriff Johnstone was taken to Great River Medical Center Emergency Room for treatment of his non-life threatening injury. He will be transferred to another medical facility where he can be treated by a surgeon who specializes in hand injuries.

<p>COMMERCE CITY, Colo. --Police announced they arrested Commerce City Police Officer Kevin Lord late Friday night. He faces charges of trying to influence a public official and false reporting. Lord said he was shot by a driver during a traffic stop last Sunday morning.</p>

A New York City police officer pleaded guilty to attempted murder on Tuesday for firing a barrage of bullets at a car in Westchester County last year, an unprompted, drunken attack that seriously injured a 47-year-old passenger. Under a plea deal, the officer, Brendan Cronin, 28, will be sentenced to nine years in state prison in December, a spokesman for the Westchester district attorney, Janet DiFiore, said. The plea occurred in State Supreme Court in White Plains, the spokesman said. The shooting, shortly before midnight on April 29, 2014, came amid a series of alcohol-fueled episodes involving off-duty police officers,...

Sheka was attending the Combined Law Enforcement Association of Texas convention near the hotel. According to the El Paso arrest affidavit, Sheka was engaged in a conversation with a female server near the hotel bar. The conversation allegedly turned inappropriate when Sheka began making comments of a sexual nature and ultimately touched the female inappropriately as she walked past him. The server told Sheka not to do that and walked away, escorted by another male, when Sheka pulled out a pistol and fired one round into a nearby wall.

Second Amendment advocates are firing away at a decision by Honolulu officials to destroy $575,000 worth of perfectly good handguns in a move one critic called the “height of anti-gun stupidity.” Some 2,300 Smith & Wesson 9 mm handguns, including at least 200 that are brand-new and in unopened boxes, were issued to the city’s police department. But with the 2,200-member force upgrading to lighter and less expensive Glock 17s, the guns were set to be permanently holstered. While it is customary throughout the country for departments to auction the guns to law-abiding citizens, including the police who once carried...

The Police Foundation, a research group based in Washington, D.C., released a detailed report Monday on how Stockton police responded to the July 16, 2014, armed robbery of a Bank of the West branch, where three gunmen took three women hostage and fired at officers from a speeding SUV. The group found that 32 officers unloaded more than 600 rounds during the hour-long rolling gun battle, which spanned three counties, 63 miles of highway and reached speeds of 120 mph. One of the hostages, Misty Holt-Singh, was killed when she was struck by 10 police bullets, authorities said. The two...

A study released by the American Journal of Public Health, and published by The Huffington Post, claims high private gun ownership rates are tied to police officer deaths. The study contrasts states based on gun ownership rates, listing “high gun ownership states [as] Alaska, Alabama, Arkansas, Iowa, Idaho, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Minnesota, Missouri, Mississippi, Montana, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, Wisconsin, West Virginia and Wyoming” and low gun ownership locales as “Connecticut, D.C., Hawaii, Illinios, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York and Rhode Island.”

Who would have felt comfortable in these circumstances? A Massachusetts man was driving in the town of Medford last Saturday night. He admits he took a wrong turn and ended up going the wrong way down a traffic circle. However, how wrong a turn might his life have taken if the events that followed had taken a slightly different turn. In dashcam video posted to YouTube by a driver who only gave his name as Michael, he is confronted by an angry man in a white tank top and shorts. The angry man steps out of a truck and approaches...